Gracie’s Life Experiment

Grr raaaa grrr. What is the major malfunction at the Student Loans Company (SLC)? OK, this is really a rant on behalf of hubby as I have no problems with my loan (which will thankfully be paid off next April). Before leaving the UK in December to live in Australia I contacted them and filled in the Overseas Income Assessment (OIA) form so that hubby’s payments could continue. Now I told them we weren’t moving to Australia until Christmas, so they rather helpfully wrote their reply on 10th December and sent it straight to Oz address!! Now due to Christmas we didn’t get this letter until the New Year. The letter says that we haven’t provided payment details (even though I completed the direct debit form when I sent off the OIA – how come they received the OIA but not the DD when they are actually on the same piece of paper?) and that we have to send them a cheque by 15th December. Yes – that’s right, they send you something and expect it to arrive in the post in Australia and somehow get a cheque to them and clear it within 5 days (I’d estimate that even if there was no lag time this would take 2.5 weeks). So hubby wrote a letter explaining that we’d only just received the letter and it would not be possible to send them a cheque 20 days in the past and again gave them the DD details. Thankfully this was processed correctly and the payments started coming out. 2 payments in and the SLC suddenly stop taking payments. We noticed in May that the payments had stopped and contacted them again – they have no idea why the payments have stopped and ask us if we have stopped them (WTF!! blaming us??? we did NOT stop any DD from them) and hubby asks them to reinstate the payment schedule again. They say no because our details from the OIA form have inexplicably dissappeared and we have to fill in the form again and send it to them. In the meantime to not fall behind with payments they agree to set up voluntary payments of the amount required until they have received and processed our 2nd OIA form. Hubby fills in the form AGAIN and faxes it to them. Beginning of May we get a letter from them confirming that we have set up the voluntary payments via DD and the amounts. Funny no payments taken in May. End of May we get another letter saying that they’ve increased our payments by the amount of the original payment and that the first payment would be taken 10 days in the past???, which of course it wasn’t). So still no payments, even though we have provided them with everything they need to get their money. This week we get a letter in the post that is so perplexing – it has a very accusatory tone and they’ve suddenly decided that they don’t know whether we are in the UK or not and that if we have left the UK they are going to fine us with maximum repayments if we do not fill in an OIA form for them. WTF again? This is now the third time we’ve filled in that bloody OIA form and the 4th time we’ve provided them with the details for payment. I am getting thoroughly cheesed off with this. It’s not like we’re some scumbags who are trying to skip the country without paying off the loan. We’re desperately trying to get them to take the money but they are being so useless. It’s even worse that each time we provide them with the info, they confirm in writing that it’s all sorted out and then nothing happens, a couple of months later they then send a letter accusing us of essentially trying to avoid paying. What IS wrong with them?

I have come to the conclusion that the SLC are either incompetent or they have some strange Dr Who wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey thing going on where they keep going back in time, claiming payments coming back to the present, going back in time, changing something which then changes the present time and the information previously provided dissappears because we are in a parallel universe!!!